We were lucky enough to experience one of the "great" Airstream rites of passage - the tire blowout! All things considered, it wasn't too horrible of an experience - I guess the road trip gods were smiling down on us that day. Cruising along I-90 in Montana, just past Missoula on our way to Spokane, Bill thought he heard something so we pulled off the highway to the off-ramp (which was thankfully quite large and had minimal traffic). Sure enough, one of the trailer tires was blown. And as you can see from the pics below, I mean BLOWN. Among the many lessons of this pit spot - a blown tire can indeed rip a hole in the metal of the trailer, the Airstream doesn't come with a jack, the truck jack is a sneaky hidden little bugger, trying to use the leveling blocks doesn't make a great jack, we need to stockpile duct tape and the lugnut covers are pretty much useless pains in the ass. But Bill was a champ and got us back on the road and we still made it to Spokane just before dark. We have since learned that this is a relatively common issue with the stock Airstream tires (Goodyears) and we probably need to upgrade the tires/wheels so we can keep up our rambling ways. And probably need a better fix than duct tape for the hole in the trailer body. Alvord Desert and the Steens was going to be our next little road trip during my June work break but we are hesitant to do it before getting the tires swapped out, so we will see.

Epically destroyed tire photo op

Ruh-roh

Ouch!

Peeled it right open!

Silver lining - at least we had a great place to pull over and work on it

Inga always finds a nice shady spot to chill out

Had to end on a high note with the gratuitous booze shot - the Montana Moonshine from Willie's Distillery soothed us once we finally got settled in to our Spokane campsite